Google Drive's Autodetector For Copyright Infringement Is Locking Up Nearly Empty Files

from the whoopsie dept

We've talked at length about the issues surrounding automated copyright infringement "bots" and how often those bots get the primary question they're tagged with wrong. Examples of this are legion: Viacom's bot takes down a Star Trek panel discussion, all kinds of bots disrupted the DNC's livestream of its convention, and one music distributor's bot firing off DMCA notices to, well, everyone. Google itself has reported that nearly 100% of the DMCA notices it gets are just bot-generated buckshot.

But Google isn't the savior here either. The company also uses automated systems for detecting copyright infringement and, at least in the case of Google Drive, those automated systems occasionally suck out loud at their job.

This week, Assistant Professor at Michigan State University, Dr. Emily Dolson, Ph.D. reported seeing some odd behavior when using Google Drive. One of the files in Dolson's Google Drive, 'output04.txt' was nearly empty—with nothing other than the digit '1' inside it.

But according to Google, this file violated the company's "Copyright Infringement policy" and was hence flagged. And what's worse is, the warning sent to the professor ended with "A review cannot be requeste for this restriction."

If your bot thinks a single digit is somehow copyright infringement, then your bot is a bad bot and should be taken behind the woodshed and humanely sent to bot-heaven where it can run and frolic with all the other bots. Now, to be fair, there is an open question in this case as to whether the filepath names that were chosen somehow were what was getting flagged. And, sure, maybe that happened. But it doesn't really change the point: a bot thought a file that contained a single integer was copyright infringement.

That being said, other Drive users have reproduced this, calling into the question the filepath theory.

Dr. Chris Jefferson, Ph.D., an AI and mathematics researcher at the University of St Andrews, was also able to reproduce the issue when uploading multiple computer-generated files to Drive. Jefferson generated over 2,000 files, each containing just a number between -1000 and 1000.

The files containing the digits 173, 174, 186, 266, 285, 302, 336, 451, 500, and 833 were shortly flagged by Google Drive for copyright infringement.

Again, this sucks. For what it's worth, Google has finally responded and, despite the notices indicating there was no way to dispute the bot's findings, has been sharing out links to do exactly that. But that isn't really the point. This is base-level stuff here: having a system that operates this poorly means you have a system that never should have been in production to begin with. Particularly, frankly, when that system is operating as personal file storage for many, many people.

Filed Under: automated filters, censorship, copyright, dmca, filters, google drive, hard drives, upload filters
Companies: google

Chia Cryptocurrency, Started By BitTorrent Creator Bram Cohen, Engaging In Obnoxiously Bogus Trademark Bullying

from the not-how-it's-done dept

It seems these days you can't mention anything to do with cryptocurrency without someone jumping in and insisting that cryptocurrency is a disaster for the environment. There are differing opinions on all of this, but a few years ago, BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen set out to build a more "eco friendly" cryptocurrency called Chia. The basic idea was that, rather than using a proof-of-work system -- which involves using up a ridiculous amount of computing power, it would use a proof-of-space system, looking at how much hard drive space you're allocating. After many years of development, Chiacoin finally launched a few weeks ago. And, to pretty much prove the old axiom that there's no such thing as a free lunch, while it may not be directly wasting CPU cycles, it's impacted the world differently: by destroying the global hard disc supply chain, driving prices for hard disks through the roof -- leading people to point out that even if it's not wasting electricity like Bitcoin, it may be wasting hard drives. Some may challenge the question of whether or not this is wasteful (those hard drives are doing something...) but there are multiple reports of running Chia on SSDs is wearing them out in ridiculously short periods of time -- even to the point that some SSD makers are saying that using their hard drives for Chia will void the warranty. Yikes!

All that said, this post is not so much about Chia's setup or its impact on the global supply chain for hard drives. It's about trademark bullying. You'd think that a company started by Bram Cohen -- someone all too frequently falsely accused of being responsible for music and video piracy from his BitTorrent days -- would be extra sensitive to coming across as an "IP bully" of any sort. And this is true of some of the other folks who work on Chia -- some of whom I know are Techdirt regulars.

But, for whatever reason, Chia Networks has decided to be an obnoxious trademark bully. Chris Dupres, another Techdirt regular, started a blog to cover news about Chia Networks and ChiaCoin called The Chia Plot. It's got a bunch of interesting articles about what's been happening on the Chia front.

And apparently the folks at Chia decided to threaten him with legal action.

Last week, "the head of IP for the Chia Network," Belle Borovik (who appears to be a recent law school grad), sent Chia a legal nastygram, insisting that the site violated Chia's trademark. Admittedly, the letter was at least somewhat friendlier that your typical cease and desist or threat letter. It thanked Chris for educating the public about Chia, and asked him to get a license to use the Chia name, which it offered up on a "royalty free" basis.

Chris,

I write to you on behalf of the Chia Network Inc. First and foremost, allow me to thank you for your efforts in educating and expanding the Chia community through your blog and discussions. We support open discourse and free exchange of information.

Still, it is important to Chia Network to protect its trademarks. Unauthorized use of Chia Network’s registered CHIA mark, or iits logos exposes community members to potential scammers, misleading and confusing them. Therefore, it is essential that all users of the CHIA marks, logos, or the Chia Network name obtain a royalty free permission to use the CHIA marks. Simply put, you may not continue using the CHIA mark in your domain name, or anywhere, without securing a written permission from Chia Network.

We must ask you to contact us immediately, and no later than May 28, 2021 by replying to this email, so that we may resolve this matter amicably, and you are able to continue to strengthen the community we all care about.

Except, that's not how any of this works. There is a very, very, very long line of cases, going back years, that say that websites about a trademarked brand, do not infringe on the trademark if they use the trademark in their URLs. Chris basically told them to pound sand, but did say he would clarify in his site's tagline that it was "an unofficial site." He also posted the legal threat and his response to his site.

And then, the Chia folks took away the "nicer" part of their threats, and... incredibly... became even more obnoxiously threatening and censorial. Beyond insisting that his changes were not enough and continuing to add to the false claims of trademark infringement, it also accused him of violating the GDPR by posting Belle Borovik's name in association with the letter that Belle Borovik sent to Chris. I only wish I were joking.

Dear Mr. Dupres,

It has come to our attention that your EU-registered website has recently engaged in a series of privacy violations under the General Data Protection Regulation Act (the “GDPR”) involving a Chia Network employee. To date, you have revealed our employee’s personal data, including their Name and Location, and aided in doxing behaviors of others directed toward this individual through your blog.

Despite this unbecoming behavior, you have reached out to us with the following inquiry regarding permissions to use the CHIA marks on your website:

I have added “unofficial” to the tag line of my blog to ensure that there is no confusion. Can you please confirm that this acceptable and that we are able to move on from here?

Unfortunately, adding the word “unofficial” is not enough to obviate the likelihood of confusion. Moreover, Chia Network cannot support violations of privacy laws, and cannot condone behaviors that target or endanger any member of the Chia community. This is precisely the reason for Chia Network’s vigilance in enforcing its trademark rights; the Chia Network guidelines make it easy for the community to remain connected, while maintaining a respectful and professional relationship with each other.

That said, Chia Network stands by its mission to support the Chia community, and is still willing to consider a relationship with your blog. Understandably, this can only happen if you remove all Protected Personal Information (“PPI”), including the doxing comments or references to any Chia Network employee, whether made by you or by others via your platform.

Once you have removed the doxing and PPI content from your platform, we can “move on from” there, with you obtaining a free license from Chia Network.

Sincerely,
The Chia Network Legal Team

That's uh, not how any of this works again. Chris again responded, pointing out how crazy this was, noting correctly that publishing the name of an employee who sends a threat letter is not a privacy violation (and noting that the site is registered in Canada anyway, and not the EU). Out of unnecessary courtesy, he still removed Borovik's name.

The latest is that Public Citizen Litigation Group's Paul Levy has stepped up to provide an official response from Chris to Chia Networks. And, if you're a long time reader of Techdirt, by now you should know that you basically never want to be on the receiving end of a Paul Levy letter. The letter is, in typical Levy fashion, worth reading. I was going to post just a snippet, but the whole thing is too good not to share:

Dear Ms. Borovik:

I write in response to your demands to Chris Dupres, contending that he has violated the trademark laws by using "The Chia Plot" as the name of his new web site about your company and by registering the domain name www.thechiaplot.net to be used as the internet address for the site. You contend that he needs your permission to use these names, that he needs to apply to you for a royalty-free license, and that, if he wants to resolve this situation on an amicable basis, he needs to submit his request to you immediately.

Dupres is not going to comply with your demand. Your company has no right to give (or withhold) approval for any and all uses of its unregistered trademark on web sites that discuss your company. What's more it is unreasonable for you to expect a journalist to ask for permission to use the company's name to talk about the company. Your attempt to condition his use of the name on his agreement to delete certain information from the site shows why no self-respecting journalist would give in to such a demand. See WCVB-TV v. Boston Athletic Associaton, 926 F.2d 42 (1st Cir. 1991).

Your assumption that Chia Network has a right to forbid use fits mark to denominate a web site as being about the company, or to demand the right to give or withhold such permission, is belied by longstanding precedent, set by series of cases decided by the federal courts more than ten year ago. Given the fact that your company is located in San Francisco, the decisions in Bosley Medical v. Kremer, 405 F.3d 672 (9th Cir 2005), and Nissan Motor Co v. Nissan Computer Co., 378 F.3d 1002 (9th 2004), are the most teling: Both cases squarely preclude the use of trademark law to stop Dupres's use of a web site posted at a domain name that uses your trademark as a site for non-commercial commentary about your company. Several cases in other circuits protect the right to use a domain name in the form www.trademark.com for a web site about the trademark holder against a variety of trademark claims. Utah Lighthouse Ministry v. Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, 527 F.3d 1045 (10 Cir. 2008); Lamparello v. Falwell, 420 F.3d 309 (4th Cir. 2005); TMI v. Maxwell, 368 F.3d 433, 436-438 (5th Cir. 2004); Lucas Nursery and Landscaping Inc. v. Grosse, 359 F.3d 806 (6th Cir. 2004); Taubman v. WebFeats 319 F3d 770 (6th Cir. 2003).

Trademark law aside, the First Amendment protects Dupres's right to use your company‘s name to denominate, accurately, the subject of this web site. Any effort that your company made to invoke trademark law as a reason to shut down his site, or to alter its name, would be an invocation of government power that would be subject to First Amendment scrutiny and would violate the First Amendment.

You suggest that you believe that some of your customers might be confused by the name or domain name of the web site into believing that the site is sponsored by your clients. Just how gullible do you expect your potential customers to be? I daresay that even the proverbial moron in a hurry would recognize, immediately upon visiting The Chia Plot, that it is a web site devoted to journalism about your company rather than being sponsored by your company. Dupres's site expressly states that it is not affiliated with your company, indeed, it proclaims its independence.

Moreover, Dupres has helpfully provided viewers of his site with a prominent hyperlink to your site just as, for example, did the Shops at Willow Bend site at issue in Taubman, the web site attacking Bosley Medical Group at issue in Kremer, and the site condemning Jerry Falwell's homophobia at issue in Lamparello. As a result even if Internet users mistakenly looking for your company, rather than looking for information about your company, wandered onto The Chia Plot by name-guessing, they would be quickly disabused of any notion that the site belongs to or has the approval of your company. As this very letter is propagated around the Internet, readers will gain further information dissociating Dupres's news site from your own commercial site.

Finally, I note that one of your demand emails included the preposterous contention that Dupres violated European privacy rules by identifying you as the person who sent the demand email. Although Dupres took your name off his site as a friendly gesture, you have persisted in pursuing trademark claims that have no legal bass. Accordingly, your name will likely appear in stories written about your claims.

I am giving you until June 9 to retract your demand that Dupres stop using the word "chia" in the domain name for his web site and in the title of the site. Dupres is not willing to keep operating his web site subject to the threat of a claim for trademark damages. Consequently, failing a prompt retraction, a request for waiver of service could well be the next communication you receive on this topic

Whatever you might think of Chia as a cryptocurrency, it's silly legal threats -- both about trademark and (even more ridiculously) about the GDPR -- seem to raise questions about what the hell is going on over there...

Filed Under: belle borovik, bram cohen, chia, chris dupres, cryptocurrency, gdpr, hard drives, paul levy, trademark, trademark bullying
Companies: chia networks

Copyright Troll Carl Crowell Ups The Ante: Now Demands Accused Pirates Hand Over Their Hard Drives

from the nope dept

Carl Crowell is a special kind of copyright troll who has graced our pages in the past. The lawyer who worked with Voltage Pictures and whose tactics were underhanded enough to warrant a lawsuit from his former business partner and for a federal judge to setup a pro bono legal team for the targets of his trolling threat letters, Crowell has always operated at the far end of the spectrum when it comes to copyright trolls. That said, a recent demand he made of someone he accused of pirating the film Mechanic: Resurrection takes things a step further by simply demanding the accused turn over his computer upon accusation.

Bill Sheldon mostly uses his personal computer, a Hewlett-Packard Envy laptop, to watch how-to videos for car repairs so he can make an extra buck now and then by fixing a neighbor's radiator. So Sheldon, a 55-year-old Portlander, was surprised in early April when he was sued for copyright infringement for allegedly using BitTorrent software to illegally download a movie called Mechanic: Resurrection—a Jason Statham flick he says he'd never heard of before seeing the title on the court papers. He soon received an even bigger surprise. On April 28, a second letter arrived, asking Sheldon to hand over his computer's hard drive for testing.

Sheldon refused and adamantly insisted he's never heard of either the film or the term "bittorrent" before. Instead, he was afforded a pro bono lawyer, who was mandated to only work for three hours on his case, but who instead chose to stay on once he saw that Crowell had demanded that Sheldon turn over his personal and private property for review.

"There's no judicial oversight of what [Crowell] can and cannot do with the hard drives," says Perriguey. "There's no order to destroy the data or to keep it safe. He's getting access to people's highly private and personal information, including legally protected health information."

Crowell says he asked for Sheldon's computer only to make sure he had stopped illegally downloading movies.

"I have neither the time nor the interest to review the personal information that might be on a party's computer," Crowell says.

Which is, of course, entirely besides the point. And, it should be noted, taking Crowell at his word after he has spent the better part of the decade being a factory for settlement threat letters built on flimsy evidence and fear doesn't seem like a reasonable course of action, either. Whatever you think of Crowell and his copyright trolling ways, there are proper and improper tactics to use in a copyright infringement case. Demanding the receipt of private property that almost certainly contains highly private information about what is merely an accused copyright infringer is plainly bonkers. It's worth repeating at this point that it isn't only Crowell's victims crying foul, but also those on the other side who have worked with him on his copyright efforts.

James S. Davis, a former law school classmate of Crowell's who helped him bring dozens of copyright cases in California, sued Crowell in July for allegedly misleading him about the legitimacy of his cases. His suit alleges Crowell has not done enough to prove the cases have merit or even that his clients own the right to sue for copyright infringement.

Nicholas Ranallo, Davis' attorney, says Crowell's cases use scare tactics to drive defendants into settlements.

It seems to me that when every side of an issue thinks you're doing something wrong, you probably are. For Sheldon's case, Crowell attempted to drop the case, suddenly proclaiming that he believed Sheldon was telling the truth. But he refused to pay Sheldon's legal fees for what was apparently a self-admitted frivolous case. And so the case goes on as Sheldon tries to get his piece of justice.

Filed Under: bill sheldon, carl crowell, copyright, copyright troll, hard drives

This Week In 'The NSA Knows F**king Everything': How It Hacked Most Hard Drives And SIM Cards

from the call-it-a-twofer... dept

Thought that the revelations of NSA/GCHQ spying were dying out? Having some "surveillance fatigue" from all the stories that have been coming out? Have no fear -- or, rather, be very very very fearful -- because two big new revelations this week show just how far the NSA will go to make sure it collects everything. First up: your hard drives. Earlier this week, Kaspersky Lab revealed that the NSA (likely) has figured out ways to hide its own spyware deep in pretty much any hard drive made by the most popular hard drive manufacturers: Western Digital, Seagate and Toshiba.

Kaspersky said it found personal computers in 30 countries infected with one or more of the spying programs, with the most infections seen in Iran, followed by Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Mali, Syria, Yemen and Algeria. The targets included government and military institutions, telecommunication companies, banks, energy companies, nuclear researchers, media, and Islamic activists, Kaspersky said.

The firm declined to publicly name the country behind the spying campaign, but said it was closely linked to Stuxnet, the NSA-led cyberweapon that was used to attack Iran's uranium enrichment facility. The NSA is the U.S. agency responsible for gathering electronic intelligence.

A former NSA employee told Reuters that Kaspersky's analysis was correct, and that people still in the spy agency valued these espionage programs as highly as Stuxnet. Another former intelligence operative confirmed that the NSA had developed the prized technique of concealing spyware in hard drives, but said he did not know which spy efforts relied on it.

As the report notes, it appears that this is a kind of "sleeper" software, that is buried inside tons of hard drives, but only "turned on" when necessary. The report notes that it's unclear as to how the NSA was getting this software in there, but that it couldn't do it without knowing the source code of the hard drive firmware -- information that is not easily accessible. A few of the hard drive manufacturers have denied working with the government on this and/or giving them access to the firmware. It's possible they're lying/misleading -- but it's also possible that the NSA figured out other ways to get that information.

And that brings us to door number two: your mobile phone's SIM card. Today, the Intercept revealed (via the Ed Snowden documents) how the NSA and GCHQ were basically able to hack into the world's largest manufacturer of mobile phone SIM cards in order to swipe encryption keys, so that your friendly neighborhood intelligence snooper can snoop on you too:

The company targeted by the intelligence agencies, Gemalto, is a multinational firm incorporated in the Netherlands that makes the chips used in mobile phones and next-generation credit cards. Among its clients are AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and some 450 wireless network providers around the world. The company operates in 85 countries and has more than 40 manufacturing facilities. One of its three global headquarters is in Austin, Texas and it has a large factory in Pennsylvania.

In all, Gemalto produces some 2 billion SIM cards a year. Its motto is “Security to be Free.”

With these stolen encryption keys, intelligence agencies can monitor mobile communications without seeking or receiving approval from telecom companies and foreign governments. Possessing the keys also sidesteps the need to get a warrant or a wiretap, while leaving no trace on the wireless provider’s network that the communications were intercepted. Bulk key theft additionally enables the intelligence agencies to unlock any previously encrypted communications they had already intercepted, but did not yet have the ability to decrypt.

The details of just how the NSA hacked into Gemalto are quite a story -- and proves what a load of crap it is when the NSA and its defenders insist that they only target bad people. As former NSA (and CIA) boss Michael Hayden recently admitted, they actually like to spy on "interesting people." And who could be more interesting than the people who have access to the encryption keys on billions of mobile phones? So, yeah, the NSA and GCHQ basically spied on IT folks at the company until they found a way in. So, the NSA spies on "bad guys" and "IT people" for the good guys. Because, I'm sure they'll claim, it helps them get the bad guys. We've seen this before, when the GCHQ hacked into Belgian telco giant Belgacom, allowing them to tap into communications at the EU Parliament. Hacking into various companies appears to be standard operating procedures for the NSA/GCHQ these days, with no thought to the collateral damage being caused.

And, yes, both of these hacks basically involve giving the NSA an astounding amount of access to our electronic devices:

Leading privacy advocates and security experts say that the theft of encryption keys from major wireless network providers is tantamount to a thief obtaining the master ring of a building superintendent who holds the keys to every apartment. “Once you have the keys, decrypting traffic is trivial,” says Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union. “The news of this key theft will send a shock wave through the security community.”

[....]

The U.S. and British intelligence agencies pulled off the encryption key heist in great stealth, giving them the ability to intercept and decrypt communications without alerting the wireless network provider, the foreign government or the individual user that they have been targeted. “Gaining access to a database of keys is pretty much game over for cellular encryption,” says Matthew Green, a cryptography specialist at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute. The massive key theft is “bad news for phone security. Really bad news.”

Between both of these big stories this week, it's clear that the NSA is basically deeply buried in pretty much every bit of electronic equipment these days, with the tools ready to go to spy on just about anything. The idea that this power isn't being abused regularly is pretty laughable.

Filed Under: certificate, encryption key, gchq, hacking, hard drives, malware, nsa, privacy, sim cards, spyware, surveillance
Companies: gemalto, samsung, seagate, toshiba, western digital

Guardian Releases Video From That Time Its Editors Were Forced To Destroy A Laptop That Had Snowden Documents

from the remember-that-one-time,-at-idiot-camp? dept

You may recall how, last summer, there was a ridiculous situation in which David Cameron ordered a government official to go down to the Guardian's offices in London and force them to physically destroy a computer that had stored some encrypted documents from the batch of documents that Ed Snowden had given to reporters. The whole thing was ridiculous on multiple levels, as the Guardian's editor Alan Rusbridger clearly told the government officials that there were other copies outside of the UK, and that the Guardian would continue reporting on those documents from its offices in NY. Apparently unaware of how stupid they looked, the government officials continued the charade, and the Guardian physically destroyed the drives and memory cards.

The Guardian has now released a short video that intersperses some commentary and news clips about the event with some actual footage of Guardian employees taking power tools to the components in question. As Rusbridger noted at the time, this was a particularly "pointless piece of symbolism that understood nothing about the digital age." And, really, that line could apply to an awful lot about the NSA/GCHQ affair lately. Yes, they understand a lot about how to spy on everyone via digital tools, but they've shown little to no recognition of the problems this creates for the economy, for technology, for innovation, for privacy, for security and for public sentiment.

Filed Under: alan rusbridger, david cameron, ed snowden, free speech, freedom of the press, hard drives, uk
Companies: the guardian

IFPI Convinces ISP To Just Hand Over Hard Drives Of Torrent Site

from the that-seems-questionable dept

This is not the first time something like this has happened, but the IFPI somehow convinced Swedish hosting company Itstaden/ServerConnect to simply hand over the hard drives of one of its hosting customers, LimeTorrents. The IFPI apparently has been pressuring ServerConnect for moths, claiming that it could be liable for any infringement on LimeTorrents, but rather than filing a lawsuit, it simply said that ServerConnect should hand over the harddrives and it did. I'm curious how this is legal. It may depend on the specific contract ServerConnect has with its customers, but it seems that handing their hard drives over to a private party without any sort of court order almost certainly breaks the user agreement, if not local privacy laws.

Filed Under: hard drives, isps, legality, liability, torrents
Companies: ifpi, lime torrents, serverconnect

Austrian Collection Societies Want A 'You Must Be A Criminal' Tax On Hard Drives

from the pay-up dept

techflaws.org points us to the news that seven different collection societies in Austria are demanding a private copying levy on all hard drives (Google translation of the original German). Since seven different collection societies are involved, and each needs to get a cut, when you add all their fees up -- it means that all hard drives under 500 GB have 21.60 euros added to the bill, while hard drives over 750 GB get a whopping 43.74 euros added (it's not clear what happens between 500 to 750 GB). There's also some weirdness where hardware vendors who give up their right to sue can have the levy reduced by 2/3 -- which makes the whole thing seem even more sketchy. Apparently, similar plans have been rejected in the past, but the collection societies have claimed "times have changed." And, the response should be: so it's about time you learned to change as well.

Filed Under: austria, collection societies, hard drives, levies

Computer Repairman Steals Hard Drive, Tries To Charge Company For 'Retrieving' Data

from the so-close-yet-so-far dept

It's widely known that internal staff are the biggest threat to IT security, but what about your computer repairman? After a hard drive was stolen from Real Living Action Realty in Pennsylvania, the company called Kevin Andrew Lutes, who had done repair work for them in the past, to fix the machine. He told them he could retrieve the files, but the owner later called the computer manufacturer and learned that it's impossible to do this... without the hard drive. Oh, and the police learned that Lutes' car -- computer repair sticker and all -- was spotted outside the office on the night of the break-in. When he returned a few days later with the stolen hard drive back inside the computer and tried to charge the company $2000 for the "repair," Lutes was arrested and charged with theft. You'd think that with potential access to the machine, he could have done something a little more subtle or sinister, but, lucky for the company, their repairman turned out to be a pretty dumb criminal. Someone should let him know that basing a business model on artificial scarcity is a bad idea...

Filed Under: hard drives, scams, theft

Seagate Decides It Can't Compete With Solid State; Sues Over Patents

from the shows-how-comfortable-Seagate-is dept

Just a few weeks ago, we noted that Seagate's CEO appeared to be admitting that his company didn't have a real strategy to compete with the growing threat of solid-state flash drives competing against traditional hard drives. Instead, he said that if the competition got too hot, he'd just sue for patent infringement. Basically, he was admitting that he was planning to use patents in exactly the opposite of the way they were intended to be used. He'd use them to block an innovative new competitor, but only once that competition became serious enough. Apparently, Seagate believes that moment is now, as we're seeing more and more laptops hit the market with solid state drives, so Seagate has filed its first patent infringement lawsuit against a maker of the technology. Basically, the company is admitting that it can't actually compete or make a better product, so its strategy is to sue competitors. It's a pretty weak response, but thanks to our patent system, it may be perfectly legal (if exactly the opposite of what the patent system intended).

Filed Under: competition, hard drives, innovation, lawsuits, patents, solid state
Companies: seagate

Seagate: If Flash Drives Get Too Cheap, We'll Use Patents To Make Them Expensive

from the just-as-Thomas-Jefferson-intended dept

Back in 2005, we pointed out that Seagate's CEO, Bill Watkins, should be worried about the future of flash solid state drives (SSDs) eventually replacing hard drives. It's taken some time, but those SSDs are starting to show up in laptops like the MacBook Air and the Lenovo Thinkpad x300. Reader Nick Burns points out that Watkins appears to be singing the same old tune, with one slight adjustment. For the most part he's doing the "nothing to see here, flash drives are still too expensive" song and dance -- but people who understand the inevitable march of technology (and how the innovator's dilemma works) are finally pointing out flash is getting much cheaper very, very quickly. So what's Watkin's response? If SSDs get really cheap, he'll just sue everyone for patent infringement. Yes, even though SSDs are totally different technology than a standard hard drive, Seagate's holding on to patents that cover "many of the ways a storage device communicates with a computer." So, if solid state drives suddenly get popular, Watkins plans to sue. In other words, he'll use patents to stop the competition of a totally different technology. It's the same old story. When you're losing in the marketplace, sue for patent infringement. If you want to know the point at which Seagate has realized it's lost the battle, just look for when the infringement lawsuits come out. Just as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison envisioned.

Filed Under: bill watkins, flash drives, hard drives, patents, solid state
Companies: seagate